For frequent travelers in Portland, Oregon, it stands to reason that the most anticipated part of a $2 billion airport expansion might be additional space to make flight connections easier, or perhaps new food and beverage options.

Maybe other Portlanders are most excited about an internationally recognized architecture firm’s design that features ribbons of exposed wooden beams across a barrel-vaulted roof.

Instead, it appears for a large segment of Portland travelers that the new terminal’s most eagerly awaited feature is, strangely enough, the carpet.

As construction workers near the finish line on the new terminal at Portland International Airport, scheduled to open in August, one remaining task is to install carpet in the arrivals and security areas.

It’s not just any carpet. It’s floor covering with the same design of carpeting that was ripped out of the airport a decade ago. It's the same design that smacks of the 1980s with teal, purple and blue styling and red-colored geometric shapes and lines intended to mimic the airport’s runways and the screens that air traffic controllers use to guide planes.

The carpet has taken on a life of its own in Portland, appearing on craft beer labels, socks, tattoos and Portland Trail Blazers basketball uniforms. The carpet even has its own Instagram and Wikipedia pages.

Portlanders miss their airport carpet and can’t wait to get it back, said Vince Granato, head of special projects at the airport.

“We appreciate the fact that everybody in this community has that deep connection to PDX through that carpet,” Granato said in a statement. “I don’t feel like we should lose our history.”

Portland isn't the only airport where the carpet has made a big impression. The Instagram account "Airport Carpet" posts photos of notable carpet designs, like sunburst illustrations at the airport in Alice Springs, Australia, and the colorful checkerboard pattern in Montreal's airport. The floral pattern of the carpet at Orlando International Airport in Florida has even inspired TikTok memes.

Still, the airport floor covering holds a special place in Portland's heart. The story begins in 1987, when the architecture firm then known as Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership was designing an airport expansion. The firm decided to use a carpet designed by Portland-based SRG Partnership, now part of CannonDesign, to cover about 13 acres of terminal floors.

The carpet design was soon embraced by Portland, a city with quirks that inspired the IFC comedy series “Portlandia.”

“We just happened to hit a very responsive sense within the public that it was something that they felt really did reflect their culture,” SRG architect Jon Schleuning told Architect magazine in 2015.

After almost three decades in use, the wool carpet had become threadbare and was replaced in 2015. An interim carpet, based loosely on the original design, was never embraced by Portlanders.

It's not the only design feature the new airport terminal will have to try to impress the traveling public. The same architecture firm that installed the carpet in 1987, now known as ZGF, designed a 380,000-square-foot roof made from Douglas fir. The roof is supported by 34 Y-shaped columns and is dotted with skylights.

Carpet isn’t the only aspect of Portland International Airport that has spread into the city's culture. A well-known airline hijacking, said to be perpetrated by suspect D.B. Cooper, started from a flight that departed Portland in November 1971. While the fate of Cooper "remains a mystery to this day" after he parachuted from the plane with ransom money, according to the FBI, his legacy can be found in the beer named for him in Portland's craft brewing scene.

Even so, it may be the carpet for which Portland’s airport is best known. If the carpet wasn’t making a comeback, the architects assigned to the project acknowledged they might need to start looking for another place to work.

“I always joke that if we didn't use the carpet and our name was associated with this terminal project,” ZGF’s Sharron van der Meulen said on the airport’s website, “we'd probably be run out of the city.”

Gene Sandoval at ZGF is the lead design architect and Sharron van der Meulen at ZGF is the lead architect for interior design. SRG Partnership designed the original airport carpet. 4 M Floorcovering is installing the new carpet. Hoffman Construction and Skanska are general contractors.